Man gets 90 years in Bucktown bat beating

Heriberto Viramontes (left) faces up to 120 years in prison for the brutal beatings and robbery of Natasha McShane (C) and Stacy Jurich (right). (Cook County Sheriff / Family photos)

Sheila McShane was outwardly stoic during the trial of the reputed gang member whose 2010 baseball-bat attack left her daughter brain-damaged, but on Thursday, the emotions poured out as the Northern Ireland mother told a judge how her family had been torn apart by the beating.

“You never really realize how much you care for your family until something like this happens,” said McShane, pausing to cry moments after describing how the mugging had reduced daughter Natasha, once a promising graduate student, to “a child” who used a picture book of objects to communicate.

When it came his turn to talk, the judge, saying Heriberto Viramontes had been motivated by greed and hate, sentenced him to 90 years in prison for a vicious assault in a trendy, generally safe neighborhood that shocked Chicagoans and became another international symbol of the city’s violence.

“Their only sin was thinking it was safe to walk four or five blocks in the city of Chicago,” Judge Jorge Alonso said of Natasha McShane and the other victim, Stacy Jurich. “...In my opinion, Chicago’s been a little safer since you’ve been in the Cook County Jail.”

Sheila McShane, clutching a tissue, nodded as the sentence was handed down and then briefly smiled. After the judge concluded, she stood and embraced Jurich. Her daughter had remained at home because of her injuries.

Jurich and the Natasha McShane had known each other only four months but become close friends. The night of the attack they had been out celebrating their recent accomplishments -- McShane had landed an internship that would allow her to extend her stay in Chicago and Jurich had closed a deal at the financial services firm where she worked. The two had left a popular bar at about 3 a .m. on April 23, 2010, and had begun walking to Jurich’s duplex in the Bucktown neighborhood.

They were halfway through a lit viaduct in the 1800 block of North Damen Avenue when Jurich was hit from behind without warning with a wooden Rawlings baseball bat. Viramontes then struck McShane, a petite woman less than 5 feet tall, who fell limp to the sidewalk.

Jurich, who took a deep breath after taking the witness stand Thursday in the packed courtroom, called Viramontes a “cowardly, evil being.”

“I wish the sounds of the bat breaking my head open would go away, but they won’t,” she said. “He took from us our freedom to walk down a street and enjoy the sunshine without fear.”

Now 28, Jurich said she still suffers from seizures, cannot drive or ride a bike and has lost her job due to the aftereffects of the attack. Her fiance accompanied her to court, consoling her as the sentence was handed down.

McShane’s injuries were more severe. She requires constant care and is a shell of her former lively self. Now 27, she needs a team of 10 caregivers to assist her around the clock. She attends physical therapy five days a week and cannot walk outside her home unassisted.

The burden helped tear apart her parents’ marriage, according to her mother.

“A swing of the bat is what robbed our beautiful daughter and sister of her future,” Sheila McShane said of her daughter, who at the time of the attack was a graduate student in urban development at the University of Illinios at Chicago. “Why Natasha? Why us?”

“She is still alive, but it feels we have lost her.”

In a recorded jailhouse phone call played for the first time in court Thursday, Viramontes reacted to news that McShane was returning to Northern Ireland in July 2010 by blaming the victim, prosecutors said.

“You know, maybe this is good for her -- stop being in the f---ing streets late at night drinking,” a transcript quoted him as saying. “Especially in Chicago.”

In earlier recorded calls played at trial, Viramontes gave a couple different reasons for why he had attacked the women -- because he needed money to get high or to help out a stripper friend who had to pawn some of her belongings.

The friend, Marcy Cruz, ended up testifying against Viramontes at trial in exchange for a 22-year sentence, providing critical evidence for the prosecution. Testifying she knew Viramontes through her boyfriend, she said they met the night of the attack at a nightclub, had sex in her minivan and then drove north to Bucktown with Viramontes at the wheel. He parked, grabbed her boyfriend’s bat and then walked off, returning a few minutes later with two women’s purses, she testified.

“He stated that the girls were really pretty and that he did some bogus (stuff),” Cruz had testified at trial.

On Thursday, Viramontes’ mother, two sisters and a niece tearfully testified at the sentencing hearing about the good he had done in life and pleaded with the judge for mercy. They noted that he was only a year old when his father was murdered.